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In Reply to: RE: Follow the money. nt posted by Tony Lauck on October 16, 2010 at 18:15:05
I haven't seen any evidence of curve fitting: to the best of my knowledge, the AGW models are consistent with the laws of physics, and, with occasional lapses of the sort that are inevitable in a complex model with partial data, with observation. And, as I said, no one has been able to come up with a consistent AGW model that doesn't predict warming. That means that the anti-warming position has no scientific credibility, which is why, after years of lively debate, the vast majority of climate scientists no longer accept it.
The scam here, as so often and in the case of the tobacco and drug companies, is on the part of industry. In fact, I'm not sure I can think of a scientific scam that had another source, unless you perhaps consider the occasional hoax or laboratory fraud -- all of which I think occur on a small scale, involving an individual or a small group of researchers. What has happened here instead is that the energy industry has used the tactics of politics in an attempt to discredit science, when in fact only science can do that. Generally, that means vague and general objections and accusations, conspiracy theories, and attempts at character assassination, rather than competing models and data, which they can't present because they don't have 'em.
Follow Ups:
Have you ever worked with computer models of non-linear systems? Do you understand the issues with any computer model, especially one of a complex dynamical system? Do you understand the importance of the multiplier effect to the arguments being made that draconian measures be taken to curb AGW?
If you're going to pick on an industry, it's the finance industry that you should be picking on. If AGW is believed or legislated, it will spawn a trillion dollar market in carbon credit trading.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I'm an EE who studied physics as an undergrad, so yes, I'm familiar with the issues. That familiarity also tells me that AGW can't be debated on a scientifically meaningful level by non-specialists, myself included, who aren't immersed in the literature and don't have access to the computer models. And that science isn't conducted in the pages of the Guardian!
Carbon credit trading, BTW, is preferred by industry to regulation, and has been employed with great success to control other pollutants. It isn't, from an economic perspective, the optimum way to reduce CO2 emissions -- a zero-sum (returned to the consumer) carbon tax that makes the price of carbon emissions reflect extrinsic costs is almost certainly better -- but a carbon tax isn't politically tenable. In any case, Arrhenius predicted AGW almost 100 years before there was talk of carbon credits.
Beware of experts who hide their data and models and who have the ears of politicians.
For any credibility all raw data and models, including computer source code, must be public. The work was funded with public money and the work product belongs to the people. This should be a general rule for any publicly funded science. It should also be the policy of scientific journals. Not many people will have the time or ability to review material outside of their immediate field, but some will. Overspecialization will lead to societal collapse.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
AFAIK, most of this information is already public.
The thing is, there's no scientific case against AGW. None. If there were, all it would take is one young climate scientist, eager to make his name, and an article in a peer-reviewed journal, and we'd be done with the whole thing.
The energy industry has virtually unlimited financial resources. They can do all the research they want. And yet they haven't produced any science to refute AGW. Why? Because like the tobacco industry, they know full well that the science isn't on their side. So instead, they use the techniques of public relations and politics to fool the public. They can't do science, so they attack the credibility of scientists, the way hack politician smear their opponents.
This doesn't affect the science, any more than the tobacco industry's "more doctors smoke Camels" ads and blackout in health coverage in most popular magazines prevented scientists from making the smoking-cancer link. But, like the tobacco industry's subterfuge, it results in terrible harm to the public, since it becomes politically impossible to take the steps necessary to mitigate warming. So we face the terrible consequences of warming, and the probable added costs of desperate last-minute attempts at mitigation.
There's a sound scientific case for mild warming, based on 100 year old physical principles. Beyond that, there are a bunch of computer simulations that can be debated. The proponents of AGW are making extraordinary claims that we are doomed unless we completely change our entire economy. Before acting on these claims any sensible person would make certain that these claims are sound. In addition, he would need to see that the actions proposed will actually make a significant difference and that they won't have worse consequences than no action. This is not just a matter of science (knowledge) — it is a matter of action. The "scientists" can have all the theories they want, right or wrong, but that's not the same as forcing people to turn their lives upside down because a group of intellectuals are able to persuade a bunch of politicians and other crooks and thugs who have figured out how to capitalize on the theory (viz. Al Gore).
Personally, I think it much more likely that we are heading into another ice age. About the only thing that I agree with the climate "scientists" about is that climate will change. That's a safe bet and it's akin to how the stock market pundits generally operate. The trick in all such scams is to bet with other people's money.
Experts have been called "polished satans". Beware.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
You put the word "scientist" in quotes. Do you believe that the world's universities are granting PhD's to poseurs, and that universities and organizations like NASA are staffed with fakes? And whose predictions do you expect me to believe, your prediction of a new ice age or the prediction of working, credentialed climate scientists with access to sophisticated computer models?
You suggest that warming is minor. In fact, it looks like 2010 will be tied for hottest year in the historical record:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/2010-tied-so-far-for-warmest-on-record/?hp
Here's another article on Aspen die-offs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/science/19aspen.html?src=dayp
A few weeks ago, it was coral reefs. If they die, the reef fish will die, and people in tropical countries who depend on them will go hungry.
One can't go very long without reading news like this. We face -- are already experiencing -- an environmental calamity, and this is just the beginning, because the greenhouse gases we pour into the atmosphere now will remain there for years. Warming is a delayed phenomenon.
You say before acting a sensible person would make sure that all the claims are sound. How exactly would that sensible person do that? By listening to talk radio hosts? Because scientists working in the field say, almost to a man and woman, that the claims are sound, and honestly, I don't know of anybody who is equipped to dispute them.
Meanwhile, we're living in the test tube here. We're performing the experiment on ourselves. The results are already pretty startling obvious -- vanishing glaciers, an open northwest passage, a high incidence of freak weather, the beginnings of vast die-offs.
And all for what? Despite what the corporate shills claim, doing something about warming wouldn't have much effect on our way of life, or our wallets.
My belief is that certain areas of science have been corrupted by money. Most of this money is coming from government, some from large industry. The peer review process is broken and cliques review each other's papers. The problem is by no means confined to Climate Science. Occasionally, there are researchers who are caught with perpetrating blatent frauds. The Universities are no longer independent bastions of knowledge, as they get most of their research money from government or industry. Finally, government and large corporations are in bed with each other, as anyone who has followed the financial bail out can tell. There is a name for this system: fascism. Because of this corruption, it behooves one with the abilities to do one's own investigation. However, if one discovers something wrong, one has to keep one's mouth shut or be prepared to experience lots of difficulties.
BTW, I worked for a few years doing scientific programming in support of scientists at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in the mid 60's. It was clear then that some of the scientists didn't appreciate the problems with computer simulations, e.g. were interpreting printouts that were nothing more than accumulated round off error. I moved into computer systems and communications and did research and development in computer network protocols. There we made extensive use of simulation and took care to validate our simulations against physical devices which we constructed and measured. We became quite familiar with many ways of distorting results, as business competitors did their simulations of competing designs and some of these researchers were notorious for distorted presentations, particularly deceptive graphic charts.
There is an inherent conflict of interest in any researcher who is earning his living doing research. He must please his employer, i.e. the one paying the bills. As much as one tries, it is very hard to escape from this conflict completely. This is why one sees most dissent coming from retired persons whose livelihood is no longer at stake. In previous centuries, scientific research, by and large, was not nearly as corrupted.
If you want to dismiss these observations as "conspiracy theory" feel free to do so. I call it as I see it.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Well, yeah, that's the thing. As Einstein said, if I had been wrong, one scientist would have been enough. Even if someone were suborning scientists, you couldn't corrupt the entire field, because not everyone is corruptible and even if there were, there are lots of tenured professors out there who can say whatever they want without fear for their jobs. Not to mention that there was in fact a lively scientific debate about whether AGW was real or not, which persisted until the evidence became overwhelming a few years ago. And that the scientific conclusions didn't change during the eight years of the Bush Administration, even though an Administration appointee at NASA was caught trying to suppress news about warming.
My interpretation of the retired scientist business is that you always have a few elderly scientists opposing a major paradigm shifts. Even Einstein played that role, in his rejection of quantum mechanics despite his own substantial role in the creation of the theory.
I've also noticed that most of the scientific critics, retired or not, of AGW aren't climate scientists.
Bottom line for me: if someone had an alternative model, they'd send it off to a peer-reviewed journal. And if the journal didn't accept it, they'd post their report on a web page. But no one has, despite a hugely wealthy energy industry that would be delighted to finance any such investigation and undoubtedly has its own scientists working on the issue privately, as the tobacco industry did.
"I've also noticed that most of the scientific critics, retired or not, of AGW aren't climate scientists."
I had my doubts about AGW because the material I came across sounded suspicious. It wasn't until I became familiar with the work of Richard Lindzen that I realized there was substance to my suspicions. That's when I began to look into the material in more depth.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Lindzen certainly has valid credentials. The question is, given that the great majority of climate scientists continue to disagree with him, do we continue to use the planet as a test tube?
There are always a few contrarians late into any paradigm shift, which is fine and even desirable when the issue is something that has no immediate practical consequence, e.g., whether birds are late model dinosaurs or Europeans are descended from neanderthals. But in this case, the potential consequences of continued inaction are so serious, the observed warming so rapid, the consequences of current emissions so long-lasting, and the cost of a rapid change in infrastructure so disproportionately great, that inaction seems to me a dangerous course. Whereas my understanding of the engineering is that we could reduce emissions at little net cost, and with little effect on our way of life, if Congress weren't paralyzed by special interest money.
I have to wonder why even those who doubt AGW want to continue sending money to countries that use it to develop nuclear weapons or support terrorism.
I checked out Lindzen's arguments against those areas where I had appropriate (e.g. mathematical) knowledge and he was consistently in agreement with what I knew or believed. That was far from the case with other climate "scientists". I had a lot of problems with their methodology. I go with mathematical and physical laws that have been well established. I check arguments and references. I do not count heads to ascertain truth, and above all else I do not pay attention to governing bodies as the authority on scientific truth, as these are invariably headed by people who are concerned with politics.
As to the "precautionary principle". The problem is that climate is a complex dynamical system. Things change, and even more than the weather one can not predict the effect of any actions. The outcome is chaotic, to the application of intuitive laws will not be useful. In some of these systems any change has an unpredictable effect and even the sign of the effect is in question. Yes, anything we do will change the outcome, we just don't know how much or possibly in which direction. We don't know what would happen without human activity, for that matter, although a good guess would be another ice age. So a case can be made that the net effect of AGW might even be beneficial. Doing nothing in the absence of knowledge is generally a good policy, and wasting a huge amount of economic resources in a misguided quest is stupid and violates a different precautionary principle: conserving one's resources in the presence of uncertainty.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
As I think I said, I don't consider myself qualified to weigh the scientific arguments. This is fairly unusual, even unique, given that I have a scientific and technical background. But warming is a complex modeled phenomenon, and I feel that I'd have to immerse myself in the literature before I could make a valid overall assessment; otherwise, I'd run the risk of concentrating on local phenomena without understanding their significance to the whole. And I'd be running blind without access to the models. So while I agree that science isn't done by majority vote, I have no scientific reason to suppose that this isn't playing out like a textbook paradigm shift -- lone scientists proposes a new theory, after a period of skepticism a majority of scientists come around, some gray hairs continue to raise objections.
As a practical matter, you speak of "doing nothing in the absence of knowledge," and yet it seems to me that we're actually doing something in the absence of knowledge -- pouring vast quantities of known greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. So --
- We're adding greenhouse gases
- Most climate scientists, and all the computer models, predict warming
- We measure warming unprecedented in modern times
- Barring extraordinary intervention with unproven technologies, the greenhouse gases we put in the atmosphere will remain there for many years
Do we then continue pouring vast quantities of known greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, in the chance that a few elderly scientists are correct?
What I am qualified to comment on is the cost of preventing greenhouse gas emissions. It is negligible, *if* done in a timely matter. The average road life of an automobile is 13 years, and a coal-fired power plant is designed to have a 50 year life expectancy. It would cost little to replace infrastructure and equipment with low-carbon alternatives as they reach the end of their life expectancy, and most of the added investment and operational costs could be countered through efficiency improvements. It would cost a fair amount to replace it before the end of its life expectancy, though still less than the anticipated cost of warming, to the extent that can be calculated. An example of a crash program would be the French shift to fission generation in the wake of the oil crisis of the 70's. They did it in short order, without hardship or significant economic harm.
Don't put yourself down. If the model codes were published then they could be critiqued. Otherwise, a safe working assumption is that they are bogus, just like most computer software unless it has served the test of time in the real world.
As to the cost arguments, now you are into politics and economics and that's another matter. If alternate energy technology continues to progress it will eventually become competitive with existing energy technology, e.g. progress in photovoltaic technology and battery technology. Sufficient progress in both of these technologies seems likely in the next decade or two. Then the process of orderly replacement can take place at reasonable cost.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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